One Does Not Simply...

"It's like in the great stories, Mr Frodo...the ones that really mattered..."


It's no surprise that I'm a nerd.

If that's a surprise to you, I'm not sure what rock you've been living under.

A few days ago while flipping through channels I discovered that TBS was playing the Lord of the Rings trilogy. And of course...one does not simply turn off Lord of the Rings.

...okay that was a bad joke from an overused meme.

I know I've written about my love for this series before, but let me state again...I LOVE Lord of the Rings. The story is beautiful and so symbolic. I read through it once a year and I love that whenever I re-read it I notice new things and that the story doesn't get old. The movies, while they have their flaws, are one of my favorite book-to-screen adaptations I have ever seen. They are cast perfectly, the scenery is beautiful...and they make me cry every single time.

In high school, these movies were ALL. I. WOULD. WATCH. I have so many memories of getting home from school and popping one of the DVDs in..to either watch the movie, or to watch the commentaries, or to watch the extra features. Karl and I would have it play while we sat in the living room doing our homework. There would be days when I would be working on something on the computer in the basement and I would hear the music from the movies start playing over the surround sound as Karl watched his favorite parts of the movie. He and I would both quote it constantly and sing the songs from it. I have distinct memories of him and I singing the song about the Green Dragon that Merry and Pippin sing in the third movie...complete with the round thing that they do with it.

I had a tendency to completely obsess over things in high school to the point where I usually ruined said thing for Karl. Lord of the Rings was not one of those things, thankfully.

(Okay I still completely obsess over things. But now I have a tumblr to contain that.)

Before my mother died, she and I used to read books together and discuss them. The biggest undertaking of ours was, of course, the Harry Potter series (something that I'm sad I didn't get to discuss the ending of with her). We had a rule...we read the book before we see the movie. In 7th grade I really wanted to see The Fellowship of the Ring. She got the book from the library and handed it to me. I eagerly read through it and once I finished it, she read it, then we went to see the movie. I remember going to see it in March of that year (because it was nominated for Oscars it was still in the theater). We saw it and I remember being completely enthralled by it.

....I'm pretty sure I've told this entire story before.

The point still stands, however. Lord of the Rings is something that will always make me feel closer to Mom. And maybe that's one of the reasons I still love it as much as I did when I was 13.